Today Stephanie is showing us her take on the Forest Friends Slippers, with her own little character face. So sweet!

Hi! This is Stephanie! I jumped at the chance to play with this adorable Forest Friends Felted Slippers pattern because I love animal faces on kids clothing. Reusing wool sweaters is one of my favorite refashioning routes, so that was an added bonus!

The pattern comes with three cute options already included: a hedgehog, mouse, and raccoon. My 2 year old son has been nuts for the “What Does The Fox Say” song since it got popular, so I knew he’d be excited about a foxy version instead. Orange wool sweaters are harder to find than you might think – so I ended up cannibalizing a previous cowl scarf project for these little critters.

 

I simply layered a piece of notebook paper over the printed pattern pieces and sketched out pointier ears and the fox face/tail accent bits. I think it would be easy to make a multitude of animals with this pattern! What about a bunny for Easter? A lion! An elephant! The possibilities are only limited by the sweaters you can find to upcycle.

The pattern covers a big range, with three options to cover Kids sizes 8-13, Youth sizes 1-6 and Women’s sizes 5-9. If you wanted more customized sizing it would be easy to tweak the seam allowance or add a second layer inside to both cover the seams and make it fit more snugly. The pattern includes thorough instructions for felting your sweater as well as several different hand stitching methods to finish the face accent pieces. I know some people hate to hand sew – it wouldn’t take too much adaptation to machine sew the faces on before assembling the entire foot. Also, it’s not necessary by any means, but I used my serger for the slipper body & cuff because kid slippers tend to take a beating when they’re yanked on and off all the time.

 

The sweater I had to work with had a cable knit, which seemed to prevent it from felting up as nicely as the examples in the pattern listing – they feel a little more like slipper socks than slippers. I couldn’t find any matching wool felt locally so I just used snippets from the sweater for the ears and tail. The tip on pressing wool seams with a damp rag also worked really well for keeping the ears pointy!

The diagrams for assembling the different animals are very clear. You’ll need to cut four uppers, with two as mirror images, for two complete sets. I veered off course a little bit by sewing the tails on before sewing up the back heel seam so it would be nice and secure, and if you do the same make sure you keep track of your left and right soles so the tails are facing on the outside. The pattern suggests using puff paint on the bottom for a non-slip backing; you could also upcycle some suede or leather or buy special non-skid fabric for the foot bottoms.

 

My son was pretty amused to have fox faces peeking up at him, and these will definitely fit the entire winter. I will be pulling this pattern out when I get started on holiday gifts for this year – maybe if I start now I’ll actually get them all done in time!

 

Find Stephanie: Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest

This post is part of the Betz White Sewing Collective series. Content is written by compensated contributors expressing their own views and opinions.